This article was written by Corrine Yonce, CVOEO Fair Housing Project Outreach Coordinator, who supports the Fair Housing Project’s mission to protect and expand the fair housing legal rights of classes of people traditionally subjected to housing discrimination and exclusion. Yonce entered into housing advocacy as an AmeriCorps VISTA at Vermont’s Affordable Housing Coalition in 2015 and has been community organizing and advocating for inclusive, affordable, and fair housing since.

Attending My First Housing Committee

As a new Winooski resident and first-time homeowner, I attended the Winooski Housing Commission meeting last month. The meeting was promoted on my Front Porch Forum and, like many of my neighbors and peers, I see today’s housing landscape as particularly dire and am anxious for more ways to do my part.

Housing Committees, sometimes called Housing Commissions or Housing Task Forces, are a critical resource for individual citizens to have an impact on their community’s housing landscape. While the Winooski Housing Commission is a formal municipal committee with a city employee facilitating the meetings, housing committees can be informal resident groups founded by local residents.

With my screen on the Winooski Housing Commission’s Zoom call, we made exactly nine attendees, the “Brady Bunch” effect raising a few chuckles. I quickly came to realize I was the only non-committee member on the call- something that made me nervous. Should I have emailed first to say I would be attending? Fortunately, after six years of housing advocacy, many of the faces were familiar. The facilitator assured me the meeting was open to the public and after the first order of business was completed (welcoming new committee members Stevya Mukuzo and Jack Commo) I was invited to introduce myself.

The Winooski Housing Commission plays an important role in Winooski as well as  the housing landscape for Chittenden County. Committee members noted the impact the University of Vermont’s recent student-overcommitment, subsequently rescinding housing to large portions of the student body, has had on our rental housing availability. Already 1 and 2 bedroom units are being made at a faster rate than larger, family friendly units. Students’ incomes are often subsidized by their parent’s out-of-state income, and they are snapping up available units often over a year in advance, especially the often more-affordable, but more scarce, 4 and 5 bedroom apartments. One committee member noted that many people she supports in finding housing have larger families, and have no other options besides over-crowding when desperately looking for a place to live.

What Are Housing Committees?

Housing committees work alongside housing developers & housing trusts, regional housing and planning commissions, local elected officials and municipal planning staff. Some of the tools housing committees can use to shape their regional landscape include suggesting zoning changes, reviewing permitting processes, and education around the importance of new affordable housing to combat the Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) attitude that often prevents it. Housing solutions in one town may not be the same as another.

Housing committees are often made up of people with housing or municipal backgrounds. It can be hard for those most directly impacted by the work of the committees to participate in community meetings or serve on committees. Joining a housing committee meeting might be uncomfortable for someone unfamiliar with that level of civic engagement, but the perspective of community members most directly impacted by their work is critical to ensure housing committees are meeting their needs. I recognize the discomfort I felt, someone accustomed to sharing space with housing advocates, who is familiar with the “housing language” us advocates habitually lapse into and the rhythm of collaborative meetings structures, is probably minimum to that of someone fresh to this kind of work. While we at CVOEO’s Fair Housing Project cannot promise to change the accessibility of meetings like these, we are eager to support community members who wish to enter into housing advocacy, but don’t know where to start. 

How (and Why!) to Get Involved in Housing Committee Work

How do you tell if your town has a housing committee? You can start by checking your town’s website, our map of acting housing committees, and our detailed list of committees and their key activities. If your town doesn’t already have a housing committee, we have a great Housing Ready Toolbox that walks advocates through the steps of starting their own housing committee. Starting a housing committee can be daunting, but it is doable – just last month during a community meeting facilitated by the Vermont Council on Rural Development, citizens of Barre developed a Housing Task Force.

It is critical for people to engage in their local housing conversation and ask the questions:

• • Where is the greatest need for housing?
  • How will people access this housing who have language barriers?
  • Are these units accessible to folks with various mobility needs?
  • Will this housing support families with children?

If one town appears to have more need for affordable housing than its neighbor, housing committees can look at their zoning laws and town history to ask why.

The Winooski Housing Committee is taking on the complex task of re-addressing local zoning ordinances that limit the type of housing that can be built in different neighborhoods. Committee members could see these zoning laws as a barrier to developing housing in a way that was equitable for the greater community, particularly when it comes to single-family zoning policies. While Winooski’s Housing Committee has municipal support (the Winooski Housing Committee has a city employee facilitating), most of the committee members are volunteers who simply care about the impact of housing in their community. 

Citizen Housing Advocacy Beyond Housing Committees

Even for those whom housing committees might not be a good fit, there are still ways individual citizens can learn about and promote housing policies that affirmatively further Fair Housing and assist in making their communities more accessible to those facing the greatest housing barriers. You can start by understanding what your town’s zoning restrictions are, the history behind its implementation and what barriers they present to people in and around your community. 

Usually, you can locate your town’s zoning policies by visiting your town’s website, such as this example zoning map in Jericho, VT and this Land Use & Development Regulations Document. Look for what might prevent lower-income residents from living in your community. One question you might ask, where would non homeowners might live in Jericho? While tenure (rental v. ownership) can not be regulated in zoning, there are policies that can have a “disparate impact” on rental housing. For instance, according to the Zoning Use Chart on page 25, someone could build a “single family home” up to even 8,500-ft house with just a permit and rent it out is they so choose, but it is unlikely that would happen. A Multifamily dwelling, meaning a structure that contains more than one separate residential units, is more likely to be rented rather than sold. But from this document, we can see Multifamily units are much more restricted, especially if there are more than two units. 

 This short Vox video is a very useful explainer on how certain types of zoning restrictions, like minimum parking requirements and lot sizes, have been used to traditionally keep neighborhoods only accessible to certain demographics- white, affluent communities. However, it is important to note that building more and more densely does not in and of itself address the issues of housing inequality, as this Boston City Councilor Lydia Edwards has pointed out in this Zoning & Equity conversation hosted by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard. That is why it is important not just to ask how to build more but ask, what kind of housing your region needs, who needs that housing most, and how to engage those communities directly to make sure the housing solution fits the gap at hand.

Beyond advocating for zoning changes that promote housing development, you can look to expanding renter protections in your community that promote housing stability and thriving, connected communities. In areas of low rental vacancy rates, such as in Burlington when it was reported the rental vacancy rate was under 1% in 2019, and with limited renter protections, renters are vulnerable to displacement, limiting their ability to build connections within the community, risking their access to local resources, and sometimes forcing families with children to relocate kids to new school districts. Current campaigns to expand renter protections includes Burlington’s push for Just Cause (Join Rights & Democracy TODAY – Dec. 1 for the campaign re-launch) and the Rental Housing Safety Bill, vetoed by Vermont Governor Phil Scott this past summer. 

We at CVOEO’s Fair Housing Project do our best to promote these best practices, national and local housing news, and world-wide creative housing solutions on our Thriving Communities blog and social media. Follow us to learn more!

This Housing-Ready Toolbox is a good place to start. If you missed it, this webinar, co-presented by DHCD, Vermont Housing Finance Agency, and the Fair Housing Project of CVOEO, provides an excellent overview of the role and function of Housing Committees with examples from municipalities around the state.

Comments/questions? Contact Corrine Yonce at cyonce@cvoeo.org